Although I am still unclear what the real
problem is, I note that leading blanks
will still get lost with this solution.
If you destring a variable with e.g. "0123"
as value, it will get mapped to 123.
Nick
[email protected]
Joyce Chen
> You could try using the subinstr command, which can
> substitute the blanks
> with zeros. I think you would want:
>
> gen newhhid=subinstr(hhid," ","0",.)
>
> and you could use destring or real(newhhid) to create a
> numeric variable.
Ali Murat
> > I am trying to convert a string household indentification variable
> > ,that has leading and embedded blanks, to a numeric one.
> When I used
> > the destring command, the new numeric household
> identification number
> > has no longer unique values due to leading and embedded
> blanks in the
> > orıginal string household identification variable. To be more
> > precise, I would like to document what I have done so far:
> >
> >
> >
> > gen newhhid=hhid
> >
> > destring newhhid, replace ignore(" ")
> >
> > sort newid
> >
> > l hhid newhhid
> >
> >
> >
> > Obsnumber hhid newhhid
> >
> > 161. | 21 1 211 |
> >
> > 162. | 21 2 212 |
> >
> > 163. | 212 212 |
> >
> > 164. | 213 213 |
> >
> > 165. | 21 3 213 |
> >
> > |------------------------|
> >
> > 166. | 214 214 |
> >
> > 167. | 21 4 214 |
> >
> >
> >
> > Please note that the observation 162 and 163 have a
> distinct hhid; the
> > fist has an embedded blankd, the second has a leading
> blank. However,
> > after using the destring command, they have same hhid number.
> >
> > How can I fix this problem.
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